Stories of the Day

All posts in the Stories of the Day category

Good evening, readers. I hope my absence hasn’t scarred you all terribly. I’ve had probably one of the busiest summers of my life, and god knows where it’s gone. I want it back.

I’m proud of myself for having most of my summer assignments done, unlike last year where I spent two weeks crying inside as I scrambled to get as much done as possible.

The title of the thread refers to my experiences in the working world, which is primarily the thing that has been eating my time up. Because if I want to make myself a meaningful human being in America, I must have money. To have money, I must have a job. That’s capitalism. I work at a waterpark, which isn’t that terrible, actually. I haven’t experienced any form of atrocious customers, nor have I hated the job. It’s a pleasant, minimum wage job that high schoolers can do. The only real problem I have with it is that my uniform makes me feel like Jimmy Buffett.

It’s 5 o’clock somewhere.

But other than that, it’s not terrible. Everyone I work with is really nice, and I’m not terrible at customer service. I haven’t wanted to scream at any customers. I have, however, been hit on. Multiple times. And I’m hardcore being shipped by my mother with a lifeguard.

For example, I was working at the ice cream stand and I served a little girl. Her brother and grandfather come over, thank me for being nice to her, and leave. Later on the brother comes over with the grandfather and gets some ice cream for himself. The grandfather leaves, and he stays to eat his ice cream, chatting with me, dancing to the Cotton Eyed Joe that they put on the radio during like a dance hour thingy, and not really being a nuisance to anybody (not that I had any customers at that point for him to bother), so I let him stay. When he finishes his ice cream, he leaves. Later his grandfather comes back for some popcorn and he says “My grandson really liked you. He said he wished he was older. He’s 11 now.” So I laugh and I’m a little creeped out, but I let it go. And I told my boss later and he thought it was funny. I thought it was funny in hindsight. But I didn’t realize a Hawaiian print shirt made my dating game stronger.

I don’t even think Elvis is pulling this off. The other option was One Direction and no thank you. Seriously. Googling “hawaiian print shirt hot” gives you nothing. Try it.

The waterpark, however, must close for the winter, so I need to look into other options. I recently looked at the local used bookstore down the road from my house and he actually remembered me and everything, and he asked me to leave an application there. I’ve been dreaming about having that job for ages, and getting that particular job was what got me into job hunting for a while.

But recently I took a couple weeks off because I had this major internship for school I had to do at a law firm. I wasn’t sure what to expect, I had heard mixed reviews about most of the internships my friends have had, and so I was a little hesitant, but then I got there and met everyone and thought it was fabulous. We went to court one day, and this guy behind us realized he was in the wrong courtroom. So he asks the bailiff to take him to the right one, and he gets up to start doing the “I need to poop” walk. He then lets out a massive fart, and left the room a little bit quicker than before. Everyone was trying hard not to bust out laughing in the middle of the courtroom but I was dying in the car ride back to the office.

I was also arguably the best dressed person there. I rock the suits. Rock them hard.

Speaking of internships, we come to the big announcement I have for tonight.

A friend of mine name Jonathan who runs ZEJ Roleplaying, the website I admin at, recently encouraged me to apply for an internship at PopWrapped, a news website that covers pop culture, entertainment, and politics. I of course said “sure why not” and he put in a good word for me with his boss. Last night I received an email saying “hey welcome aboard!” and now I’m a staff writer! I’m in the phase of getting everything set up, but it’s 2-3 articles a week and it’s a relatively big news website so it’s making me more well known. I hope you all follow me there, and I’m really excited to be working there. Maybe this will help me figure out what to do with my life later on. Interning like this really helps you figure out whether or not you hate something or love something, and I’m hoping this taste of the world of journalism is a good one.

I’ve been busy the past few weeks doing various different things. Starting out with debate and zombie army crawling towards Spring Break. But now I’m doing the Spring Break thing and I’m super duper happy.

Debate is a really odd thing, especially my style of debate, Student Congress. It’s similar to Model UN only much more AMURIKA and serious. Odd things happen in the chamber. People act like actual politicians and it can get actually pretty scary. But then there are some people who make for interesting stories.For example, I was at regionals and someone goes up to give a speech. This guy (We’ll call him Reek because he got on my entire team’s nerves and it rhymes with sneak… cookie for reference) went up and gave a decent speech, then took out a pocket version of the Constitution of the United States of America. Yes, the We the People one. He reads a section from it and ties it into getting rid of tobacco subsidies being unconstitutional then THROWS IT ON THE GROUND. Literally. Not dropping it.

Like this.

Now, we do the whole congressional oath of office thing at the beginning of the tournament, including swearing to protect and defend the Constitution, and I think throwing it may be a violation of that. Somehow.

We tried to disqualify the speech and label the book as a prop (which we were pretty sure you can’t have), but the speech was included later on because apparently the prop rule was in the rule book… two years ago. So the director gave them benefit of the doubt and kept the speech, and Reek won the tournament, much to my team’s distaste.

Funny side note: One of my teammates is in theatre, so she taught us some vocal warmups they do in theatre and we were doing them in a circle. A girl we know came over and thought we were talking strategy but then she heard us chanting about mixed biscuits and became concerned and confused.

So once that exhausting tournament was over, spring break came down upon me like a gift from the gods of the universe and Neil DeGrasse Tyson (Yes, I’ve been watching Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey and it is magical).

Spring Break means vacation time, and vacation time means college touring. It was while I was college touring that I have found the college of my dreams.

College is a weird thing. College is like a wedding dress. You have to try on a few before you find The One and it’s super expensive.

Randy and the other lady were my parents. I’m in the dress. Mel and Munchkin are on the couch.

My parents and I have pretty much been on the same page of the college thing. I made my expectations fairly clear to them, and they seem to have gotten it. They’ve been pretty okay with it too. So they took me college touring on this fine spring break, and we went up to Gettysburg College.

We pulled into town and I was in love.

We pulled into the parking lot and I was truly in love.

By the time we finished the tour, I was ready to pack my stuff and move in.

Gettysburg is a magical place filled with quaint historical houses, ghosts, and you probably are breathing the same air Lincoln breathed when he gave the Gettysburg Address. It’s a bit of a tourist area, but it has more local restaurants than chains. I mean I saw the chains, I ate at a Friendly’s and got Starbucks plus saw the fast food chains and a Domino’s, but it’s CHARMING. There was one restaurant we ate at that was in the tavern area of the oldest building in Gettysburg called the Dobbin House and it felt like I was eating in a tavern, complete with somewhat dim lighting and candles. The food was delicious and it was my favorite restaurant that we ate at.

The college itself has gorgeous buildings on a well maintained landscape, nearly in the heart of the historic area of Gettysburg, and is a bit larger than my high school. It has the traditional feel of William and Mary but there’s less of a pressured vibe to it and it’s not like other schools in its own weird way. It’s scholarly, but it’s not intimidating, and it’s interesting. I felt like I would fit in perfectly there, and I would never want to come back home. I’m sure I will, but I love that college so much it’s a problem. The library is wonderful, the on-campus housing is beautiful, and I love everything and everyone. Mom and Dad really liked it too, and was happy that I was happy. I really couldn’t put it into strong enough words at the time so the best I could do was emit high pitched squealing.

While we were there, that stupid cold front that dumped snow on Watson while she was looking at Notre Dame blew through while we were tramping about on the Gettysburg battlefield. It was muddy, it was cold, it was rainy, and that probably muddled my concentration on remembering the battle, but it was still really amazing. It’s a huge battlefield, and we only saw a few of the monuments. We tried to find where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address (which my mom was surprised was only a few minutes) but the only sign we found about it said that it was “nearby.” Eventually we gave up because it was cold and rainy and went to get hot chocolate from Starbucks.

Today we went to Chocolate World in Hershey and made our own chocolate bars while wearing sexy hairnets. And then we drove home for most of the day.

Road trips aren’t a bad thing, right? And then you get caught in D.C. traffic. So you turn up the radio to distract yourself from the annoyances. This wouldn’t be so bad if you hadn’t spent most of the trip listening to music from the 70s-2010s. I like that music, but it gets less nostalgic overtime. And I would want to go back to the modern pop hits because my parents don’t like my indie rock jams, but dear god can radio stations overplay songs. So can society.

Let’s do a case study.

“Happy” by Pharrell was originally written for the movie Despicable Me 2. It’s a positive and upbeat tune that doesn’t discuss drugs, sex, alcohol, violence, etc. because it was originally intended for a children’s movie. It’s also been nominated for an Oscar for best song, but lost to Frozen‘s “Let It Go.” By now, if you haven’t heard this song, you’re living under a rock and I would like to join you.

Now, I like the song. It’s a good song, it’s refreshing. The video features normal people doing a happy dance and it’s cute. The only thing I dislike about it is Pharrell’s ridiculous hat.

I don’t get it! What is he, a mountie?! Why is this a thing?!

But then it comes on so much you can’t escape it. And then your school does a video with the teachers dancing to it. And they play that song in the hallways. And project the video during lunch. On loop. For thirty minutes. The video was cute. But then I grew increasingly UNHappy. My taste for being happy was soured by a bad case of Overplayitis. And that’s sad.

Of course I tried to change the channel a lot, but I was trapped in the back seat, so my arms didn’t extend that far. I also had earbuds and freshly loaded CDs on my phone, but phones die eventually.

The music industry is weird nowadays. I don’t like how they’ve allowed so much screaming of sex and drugs to be played so often, and they’ve let autotune rule everything. Then they spoil a perfectly good song and then it all goes back downhill from there. I really liked “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons, and “Counting Stars” by OneRepublic. And then they beat it until it was beyond dead. “Happy” will be the same way. And looping songs like this made for a bad road trip.

I’m just glad to be out of the car. I don’t know how I got to this. It made more sense in my head, but it’s late and I’m tired. We’ll go with it.

Welcome to my city, where snow happens and everything shuts down. Including school. I had a two day week last week, and a two day week this week since school is closed tomorrow.

This sounds really great, right?

No.

I normally spend my snow days in my pajamas lounging and watching Netflix. That’s how I spent last week’s snow days. But now I’ve watched all the stuff I had wanted to watch (any recommendations on what to watch next…?) and now I’m waiting for something to do.

I have finished and started books. I have been on Tumblr so much. I watched the finale of American Horror Story: Coven (I approve of the new Supreme.). We made brownies, muffins, and snow cream, and then I tried Turkish coffee.

It’s like espresso. It’s that strong. I had to go out and run around in the snow for a while to the point where I couldn’t feel my fingers.

Am I secretly turning into Hyperbole and a Half with strange content and infrequent posting? Maybe.

I guess I’m back for now. Before I disappear on a long hiatus again (watch it happen. Watch. It. Happen.), let me just tell you what I’ve been doing.

Reading

Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve looked at my One Year Book Challenge page, where I’ve been challenging myself to read as many books as I can in a year, but that deadline is coming up. I’ve gotten way more into reading recently in an attempt to cram last minute. I’ve done a somewhat decent job, but I don’t know how I can cram 10 books into 8 days unless I read two a night or something. After that deadline, I’m going to take a short break and restart it on January 1, 2014, with a few different rules. I’m only going to count books I own or read in school, which means no library books. The reason is I own over 200 books and a decent chunk of them I have yet to read. Mainly because I keep buying more. But whatever. I may also try to keep them in alphabetical order by author, but I probably won’t because I have books in the Ps and Rs and I’m impatient. What I also might do is include some friends and make it more of a competition. Maybe organize it into a Facebook group or something and use the same rules, except the people I do it with don’t have Facebook.

Also, I know I haven’t been posting reviews because I’m a dumb and I’ve been reading books faster than I can review them. I’m sorry. I may do a roundup post and do short reviews of the books I’ve read that weren’t reviewed. Although, by now there may be details I forget. I don’t know. I’ll try.

Speaking of Facebook…

Social Networking

Ugh, I have a problem. I’m a little bit of a social networking addict. I will contentedly scroll down Facebook and Tumblr for hours, and I will happily watch several Youtube videos. Today, while at Barnes and Noble, I reluctantly gave in and made myself an Instagram. It’s a case where “If I care about you, you will receive follow. Otherwise, you follow me.” Following people means following 8 people and letting the rest come to me. I already have two followers… both of whom I know. I know, my life has hit a new low.

Driving

Hehe… driving… Yeah, about that…

So there I was, driving home from the grocery store with Mom. It’s around 6pm at night, and I’m on a busy road that I have to take to get into my neighborhood. It’s a right turn to get in from the direction I’m going in. I slow down (not enough) and I take the turn (not wide enough) and all of a sudden I feel a huge jolt. I slam the brakes, put the car in park, and put the hazards on before I started crying and freaking out. Mom, being sane, got out of the car to look at the front wheel only to discover it was blown.

Mom calls Dad and makes him come get us. We transfer groceries to his car then Mom drives it home, leaving my dad and me to change the tires. This proves to be a challenge, since I lack upper body strength. It took me 5ever to get the donut out of the trunk, I had to have Dad at least start the lugnuts, and I had trouble getting the messed up tire back in the trunk. I at least know how to change a tire, I also know that I need a AAA membership.

Discussing politics… probably better than most politicians.

Happy Election Day, I get off from school because they use schools as polling locations so it’s probably not a good idea to have adult strangers wandering around with elementary school children. It’s been a super tight race here in Virginia because both candidates suck. I’m just hoping for McCauliffe because Cuccinelli is an idiot. He came to my school once as a keynote speaker and he gave a speech about prostitution that put the principal to sleep. I also generally dislike conservative ideals because I think progress is far more important, and they’re kind of holding us back. Maybe I’ll do a post on that later.

But, on a more personal note, I’ve been working on debate things. I have an invitational coming up and I just took second place in a local tournament.

So shiny. It matches my “head b*tch in charge” red lipstick. That’s been my official title for Student Congress. The guy who took first is my “Co-head-vice-head b*tch in charge” and he has been accepting of it. He’s like a cross between Bill Clinton and Obama with a dash of Republican ideals. Mom wants me to date him. I don’t think it’s going to work out between us. Reason I have this title is because I’ve been handling the new people and teaching them the ropes.

At the local tournament, someone suggested that we take an oil rig in the Chesapeake Bay, paint it, and make it a tourist attraction. I couldn’t say anything because I was presiding officer, but what made it sweeter was the fact he was a bully to me in middle school so I got to wipe the floor with him. (: It was sweet revenge. Mom was judging, and she suggested that I compliment him and say he’s doing well. I did so. You know what his response was?

Not a “thank you.”

Not much of an acknowledgement.

But. A. SHRUG. Ugh. People sometimes.

I’ll probably post a thing from the invitational.

Other than that, there’s not much else. I’ve been sleeping because I’d rather nap than face any of my problems. Wearing my red lipstick and looking hot because I don’t go outside. Being civilly disobedient and going trick-or-treating to give our exchange student the full Halloween experience despite (stupid) city ordinances. Buying books.

The problem is, I’m not a hundred percent sure what it wants, because it’s telling me in a series of strange and unusual events. I can’t help but not explain them here, because maybe my lovely readers will show that this points to the Illuminati or something.

Strange Event #1:

This event took place on Thursday. I was walking down the hall to a debate meeting with a friend from my Oratory and Debate class, and I was all dressed up for a speech (Red Wedding. I created a convert for reading one of the biggest Game of Thrones spoilers. And I did a great job of it.), in heels. My friend Oreo sees a red balloon on the ground, and the child in me is screaming to pop it. So I run over and try to stomp it in my heels. It won’t hold still, so I pick it up and decide to pop it when I get to my debate meeting.

While I’m holding it, I notice its unusual shape, and it’s the tie part that is way too circular and large that clues me in.

That balloon is a blown up condom.

Of course this makes me drop it and hold my hands apart in a state of shock for the remainder of the walk. Oreo is laughing at me, I’m kind of laughing and panicking because I honestly have no idea how to react besides finding some form of hand wash. This also led to the many questions of “WHY?” on the way to the meeting. I was so freaked out, and now it’s really funny. Sketchy, but funny.

Strange Event #2:

Honestly, this was probably the worst of the three and it’s still pretty horrifying. I’m sitting in English class around 8am on Friday and I receive a snarky face picture text from my little sister. I of course hate having my sister text me anything because she never sends anything of value, so I tell her not to text me. She, in turn, sends me a video of her being a brat that I didn’t watch, and a picture of her crotch.

Several seconds of internal panicking and deleting the conversation entirely, I texted my mom about it because that is not okay, yo, and she takes the iPod away and tells me she’s handling. Nothing for the rest of the day until after school, when she comes to get me. She asks to see the conversation (which I deleted like a normal person would) and says the picture isn’t in the string, just a blown up picture of her tongue. The fact we don’t know her password into her iPod makes them think I’m crazy and don’t know what a vagina looks like. The fact I don’t look at porn or my own or anyone else’s because I’m straight does not mean I don’t know what a vagina looks like.

Mom gets into her iPod eventually, and shows me the conversation. She deleted the picture from the messages. The logic in my brain tells me to tell my mom to check her pictures, and WHOOMP THERE IT IS. Monster Butt receives a stern talking to and parental controls, and my phone number got deleted off her iPod. No more of that crap.

But should I mysteriously disappear and reappear on a sex offender list due to possession of child pornography, this is why. Because I have an awful little sister.

Strange Event #3:

I have never burned any popcorn or anything in a microwave before, so it came as a big surprise this morning to go heat up a cinnamon roll for 45 seconds, and it feels hard and a little cold. Then I put it back in for 30 more seconds, and the inside is black and the whole thing feels like a rock. I had expected the universe to come at me with some penis pictures sent to my phone, given how the last two were, and of course a burned cinnamon roll was more unexpected than the last two. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, I just kind of give up now.

So I guess this quote is now relevant.

“I’m a firm believer in Karma, and I think this situation was attracted into my life because it was supposed to be a huge learning lesson for me to grow and expand as a spiritual human being. I see myself being like an Angelina Jolie but even stronger, pushing even harder for the universe and for peace and for the health of our planet. God didn’t give me these talents and looks to just sit around being a model or being famous. I want to lead a huge charity organization. I want to lead a country, for all I know.” ~Alexis Neiers